> This is a direct-join union, meaning that workers can sign up on their own. This allows folks to bypass traditional unionization processes like elections and employer consent.
Good reminder that the word "union" is overloaded and doesn't always mean what you might assume.
People who join a union like this don't have union representation or union contracts with companies. They rely on individual members to take action in various forms within there own companies. In theory they could call for a strike and ask everyone who is a member to strike from their respective companies, but in practice it's more about raising awareness and making noise in hopes of driving change.
So while technically it's a union, it's not comparable to what most people think of as a union in the United States.
Most people in the united states think of unions as some kind of entrenched bureaucratic entity that's not capable of effecting change. Typically we say "the union" as if there can only be one, and once it's corrupt, there's no recourse. Often our laws reflect this, striking as part of a "wildcat" union can be illegal. It leads to this feeling that you have to know the right people to unionize.
It's a problematic perspective. "The" union might be an impotent lost cause, but "A" union can appear suddenly, strike hard, and dissipate once the need for it has gone. This seems more like the latter.
In some countries/industries you have to be a member of an union by the law. Just by working in industry, union is forced upon you by law, and you have to pay their fees. The only way out, is to form your own union, with all paperwork. It really sucks for self employed folks.
How do you think unions start? Yes, an entire workplace can just up and decide some day to unionize but more often unions start as non-bargaining unions and then at some point get enough support to bargain with the companies.
This is fantastic news and something we need very much!
When my studio was closed and 36 of us fired without notice 7 months ago, I poked around at union options and was shocked to find they were only inside individual studios, not even across whole companies, much less across the industry.
The games industry is 100 years behind film and music in standardizing contracts, roles, and rights (including IP rights for failed projects). This initiative gives us a chance to fix it!
The churn rate in the gaming studios is usually abnormally high. Most key talent often breaks off into their own indie studios, and while budgets wont be spectacular AAA level... the content usually offers better quality fun, and the artists aren't burned out in 6 months.
The film and TV production situation is nothing to aspire toward... especially if you are a contractor. It never lead to more stable work for the crews, and became a feast or famine type seasonal working arrangement for many.
Unions are better than none, as at least your crew actually gets paid by some rat-fink production manager that often disappeared on wrap.
Best of luck, and some of the best talent I've met was shafted by a AAA studio at least once in their career (often for some really bizarre reasons.) =3
How is this fantastic news in an industry that is on fire and collapsing?
The US (and more generally Western) gaming industry is getting obliterated by Asian studios. I doubt a union (pre-supposing this is a union, which it is not) would help US studios be more competitive.
A union doesn't help you if your company, or entire industry, goes bankrupt.
That does depend on laws in your particular country.
In the UK, you can be join the national union even if you are the only one in your workplace. Typically union recognition within a particular workplace comes later after sufficient numbers join.
companies with unions are a hundred years behind companies that run efficiently and do what they are supposed to instead of acting as a playing piece in the game of politics and union corruption. nobody ever talks about the fact that unions in america are corrupt… unions in germany aren't corrupt and germans can build bridges still. we can barely manage it without hiring foreign firms… stop worshiping unions its part of the problem
Just my opinion. I have no experience working in the industry _for someone else_. I am, however, working on my own game (3+ years). I'm not a believer in poor work environments, as I don't think that environment maximizes creative output. I know what it's like working with less than 7 hours of sleep, or sitting in front of a screen hours on end. It dulls the mind. It's like being half alive.
All that said: A hit based industry is not one that provides stability. I cant think of how slapping a union on top of an unstable foundation is going to solve anything. I've heard a couple people who crossed over from the film industry say it's just going to turn most roles into contracts (just like the film industry), and will quickly filter out the unskilled and less driven people.
There isn't really a solution to this. Market pressure keep the prices of games down. Funding gets a better bang for buck by investing in up and coming countries (e.g. Poland). Most qualified[1] games don't even break a million. Hitting [just!] $150,000 in revenue is when Steam starts seriously promoting your game[2]. $150K is not even enough to live in a coastal city (after dev. costs), never mind hiring people.
[1] The dev had the intent to market _and_ sell a legitimate product, which is the minority of games on steam.
> I cant think of how slapping a union on top of an already unstable foundation is going to solve anything
You mean like the entire television and film industry? Any production over a certain (small) size is completely unionized. It's so massively successful the American cultural exports dominate in almost every corner of the world.
I'm not sure where the idea that unions can't work for the games industry comes from since it's almost identical to the film and TV industry. Unions exist so workers don't get exploited and to provide stability.
What about Nintendo? They famously have very limited layoffs. They see value in providing stability and maintaing culture and institutional memory.
If anything, it's short-term profit-seeking that destroys industries. You see this in the world of original content production for streamers. They cut the size of writers rooms. They tried to no longer have writers on set. There's a push for "mini writing rooms". Why? Because it cuts costs on a very short term basis.
In doing so, Netflix (etc) are intentionally throwing away the model that created billion dollar properties like Friends, Seinfeld, ER, MASH, Cheers, etc that, to this day, generate massive profits. Seinfeld was known for getting over a million viewers when it was running in syndication.
Long-term it creates problems. Future products and showrunners are writers who need to get experience on set. Shortsighted cost-reudction is literally killing the future of the industry.
As for the price of video games, there are several aspects to this:
1. AAA publishers like to complain that games still cost $60 after years. That's true but also the distribution is significantly higher than it was 20 years ago. You're selling way more games;
2. The marginal cost of producing a game via download is essentially zero; and
3. Games eventaully get much cheaper on Steam. That's a good thing. Early experiments with this showed that selling a game cheap on Steam could generate significantly more revenue than the original release. And because the marginal cost is zero, it's all profit.
If a studio dies, it dies. Unions don't nor are trying to fix that. it happens.
But that's not the situation right now. It's companies making record revenue but choosing to do mass layoffs to make numbers look good. That's what unions fix. These companies aren't going broke from retaining existing talent. Those west coast studios are making hundreds of billions to compensate, so I'm not worried about them neither.
>I've heard a couple people who crossed over from the film industry say it's just going to turn most roles into contracts (just like the film industry), and will quickly filter out the unskilled and less driven people.
sure, they can, have, and will try to. Issue is that games are much harder to plan than film (or perhaps the executives simply can't plan as well). So a lot of those principles that "worked" in film go out the door. In addition, with service games on the rise you can't just rush something out to make day 1 revenue and tear everything down.
Being a contractor isn't inherently bad. If you work at a company that is contracted to work on games or films, you're more insulated from the financial risks. You will normally get paid either way.
Sounds like an effort of the CWA, who is also behind the efforts to unionize Google, the Apple Stores, Mapbox, the NY Times, NPR, and the gaming companies mentioned at the bottom of the article:
This is the first I've heard of "direct-join union"s. DuckDuckGo only brings up variations of this article, or the pages to join individual, employer specific unions.
Where can I learn more about this type of union? Is there one for US IT workers?
25 years in the game industry. This is worth a try. I would rather see individuals derisked more so they can be creative and happy. This may mean top performers make less and crappy workers don’t leave fast enough. It is worth the risk of that. The studios have been irresponsible since video games became an investment vehicle. Pendulum needs to swing back.
Fwiw I have been indie for 10 years so this would not benefit me.
looking at the games US workers have put out... this is only gonna make 'western' games worse.
US games are in a tremendous slump of quality and seem to be slop factories rn. Add in unions, I don't know. I don't see this helping the slop factories become not slop factories.
Looking at their website, it has obvious socialism / communism design influences. I hope these activists fail to get a foothold in the industry. These are not the type of people I want to work with and it would be bad for the stock price.
Most people joining unions are concerned about horrible working conditions and lack of basic respect and rights. The stock price should not be put above basic decency.
> it has obvious socialism / communism design influences
Which website are you looking at?
Unless I'm mistaken, the website is https://uvw-cwa.org/ and it isn't even red, have no hammers/sickles, and mostly talks about "stronger together", which fair enough, I guess could give some knee-jerk reaction about socialism if you don't believe in working together with others.
You're going to be furious when you look at the terminology and symbolism of the United States:
- it's a "Union," founded by "We the people" rather than being subjects subservient to an ordained ruler
- It has revolutionary ideals at its core
- There are fasces everywhere, an overt symbol of collective effort
- Right out of the gate, the US socialized one of the largest industries: transporting mail across the nation. Founders wrote it into the Constitution to ensure that it was untouchable
- To go along with that, the interstate highway system is a massive, communal project
- The most politically untouchable service, something politicians practically place on an altar, is a massive wealth redistribution scheme: Social Security
Beyond all this I didn't see a single thing on that site that has socialism design influences, which frankly makes it sort of un-American.
> Looking at their website, it has obvious socialism / communism design influences.
Okay, and why is this exactly bad? After all, the workers behind games want to get better working environments and they use the workers' movements symbolism in representing this. Also, class solidarity.
> These are not the type of people I want to work with
And you don't have to. You can always go indie and not associate yourself with people who organise themselves for the sake of a better industry. No one's forcing you to have solidarity and no one is forced to have solidarity with you.
> and it would be bad for the stock price.
I'll be frank (and a tad polemical) but if an industry cannot maintain its value without exploiting its workers, it shouldn't exist. That's just the free market at work.
Who cares? A union doesn't stop the fact that high budget games just kinda suck. Layoffs happen because these games bomb over and over and over and money runs out.
a union doesn't guarantee money, that's true. However, a union can guarantee acceptable hours worked - for example, limit overtime (without pay) to X hrs per week.
Or, they ensures you're credited regardless if you left before the game shipped (because it is a form of portfolio for your career).
And lastly, a union means you cannot be exploited hard, like a lot of wanabe game programmers and artists are wont to be.
Insomniac faced job cuts just 4 months after releasing Spider-Man 2, a game that sold 11 million units and had a score of 97% on Opencritic at release. Epic Games also laid off staff last year. They made a game you may have heard of called 'Fortnite'. It's been rather successful.
But then so has most of the industry, which has experienced growth year-on-year.
A profit does not prevent layoffs and no individual can 10X themselves to safety. There is a huge power and incentive disparity between the people with the power to initiate layoffs and the people who get laid off. There's a way to shrink the gap, but it means accepting you have more in common with your colleagues than your shareholders, then communicating it collectively.
How about we make sure the workers aren't abused and then talk about improving the quality of the games? There are a few decent studios who still make unsatisfactory release
>Layoffs happen because these games bomb over and over and over and money runs out.
Not these days. How many layoffs have EA/Activision done now? 4 waves each?. Sony's been doing well but still laying off all the NA studios.
[+] [-] Aurornis|11 months ago|reply
Good reminder that the word "union" is overloaded and doesn't always mean what you might assume.
People who join a union like this don't have union representation or union contracts with companies. They rely on individual members to take action in various forms within there own companies. In theory they could call for a strike and ask everyone who is a member to strike from their respective companies, but in practice it's more about raising awareness and making noise in hopes of driving change.
So while technically it's a union, it's not comparable to what most people think of as a union in the United States.
[+] [-] __MatrixMan__|11 months ago|reply
It's a problematic perspective. "The" union might be an impotent lost cause, but "A" union can appear suddenly, strike hard, and dissipate once the need for it has gone. This seems more like the latter.
[+] [-] throw9304040|11 months ago|reply
In some countries/industries you have to be a member of an union by the law. Just by working in industry, union is forced upon you by law, and you have to pay their fees. The only way out, is to form your own union, with all paperwork. It really sucks for self employed folks.
[+] [-] lalaithion|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] deadbabe|11 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dtagames|11 months ago|reply
When my studio was closed and 36 of us fired without notice 7 months ago, I poked around at union options and was shocked to find they were only inside individual studios, not even across whole companies, much less across the industry.
The games industry is 100 years behind film and music in standardizing contracts, roles, and rights (including IP rights for failed projects). This initiative gives us a chance to fix it!
[+] [-] Joel_Mckay|11 months ago|reply
The film and TV production situation is nothing to aspire toward... especially if you are a contractor. It never lead to more stable work for the crews, and became a feast or famine type seasonal working arrangement for many.
Unions are better than none, as at least your crew actually gets paid by some rat-fink production manager that often disappeared on wrap.
Best of luck, and some of the best talent I've met was shafted by a AAA studio at least once in their career (often for some really bizarre reasons.) =3
[+] [-] Ferret7446|11 months ago|reply
The US (and more generally Western) gaming industry is getting obliterated by Asian studios. I doubt a union (pre-supposing this is a union, which it is not) would help US studios be more competitive.
A union doesn't help you if your company, or entire industry, goes bankrupt.
[+] [-] dreadlordbone|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] dontlaugh|11 months ago|reply
In the UK, you can be join the national union even if you are the only one in your workplace. Typically union recognition within a particular workplace comes later after sufficient numbers join.
[+] [-] smeeger|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] YesBox|11 months ago|reply
All that said: A hit based industry is not one that provides stability. I cant think of how slapping a union on top of an unstable foundation is going to solve anything. I've heard a couple people who crossed over from the film industry say it's just going to turn most roles into contracts (just like the film industry), and will quickly filter out the unskilled and less driven people.
There isn't really a solution to this. Market pressure keep the prices of games down. Funding gets a better bang for buck by investing in up and coming countries (e.g. Poland). Most qualified[1] games don't even break a million. Hitting [just!] $150,000 in revenue is when Steam starts seriously promoting your game[2]. $150K is not even enough to live in a coastal city (after dev. costs), never mind hiring people.
[1] The dev had the intent to market _and_ sell a legitimate product, which is the minority of games on steam.
[2] howtomarketagame.com
[+] [-] jmyeet|11 months ago|reply
You mean like the entire television and film industry? Any production over a certain (small) size is completely unionized. It's so massively successful the American cultural exports dominate in almost every corner of the world.
I'm not sure where the idea that unions can't work for the games industry comes from since it's almost identical to the film and TV industry. Unions exist so workers don't get exploited and to provide stability.
What about Nintendo? They famously have very limited layoffs. They see value in providing stability and maintaing culture and institutional memory.
If anything, it's short-term profit-seeking that destroys industries. You see this in the world of original content production for streamers. They cut the size of writers rooms. They tried to no longer have writers on set. There's a push for "mini writing rooms". Why? Because it cuts costs on a very short term basis.
In doing so, Netflix (etc) are intentionally throwing away the model that created billion dollar properties like Friends, Seinfeld, ER, MASH, Cheers, etc that, to this day, generate massive profits. Seinfeld was known for getting over a million viewers when it was running in syndication.
Long-term it creates problems. Future products and showrunners are writers who need to get experience on set. Shortsighted cost-reudction is literally killing the future of the industry.
As for the price of video games, there are several aspects to this:
1. AAA publishers like to complain that games still cost $60 after years. That's true but also the distribution is significantly higher than it was 20 years ago. You're selling way more games;
2. The marginal cost of producing a game via download is essentially zero; and
3. Games eventaully get much cheaper on Steam. That's a good thing. Early experiments with this showed that selling a game cheap on Steam could generate significantly more revenue than the original release. And because the marginal cost is zero, it's all profit.
[+] [-] johnnyanmac|11 months ago|reply
But that's not the situation right now. It's companies making record revenue but choosing to do mass layoffs to make numbers look good. That's what unions fix. These companies aren't going broke from retaining existing talent. Those west coast studios are making hundreds of billions to compensate, so I'm not worried about them neither.
>I've heard a couple people who crossed over from the film industry say it's just going to turn most roles into contracts (just like the film industry), and will quickly filter out the unskilled and less driven people.
sure, they can, have, and will try to. Issue is that games are much harder to plan than film (or perhaps the executives simply can't plan as well). So a lot of those principles that "worked" in film go out the door. In addition, with service games on the rise you can't just rush something out to make day 1 revenue and tear everything down.
[+] [-] nitwit005|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|11 months ago|reply
https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/video-game-workers-launc...
[+] [-] bsimpson|11 months ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CODE-CWA
[+] [-] smeeger|11 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] khrbrt|11 months ago|reply
Where can I learn more about this type of union? Is there one for US IT workers?
[+] [-] diggan|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] brettpro|11 months ago|reply
Look to who is benefiting. Do you see any names you recognize? Anybody you love to hear?
If you want to hear, see, mocap them more make sure they are on board before your declare a side.
Edit: typo
[+] [-] bentt|11 months ago|reply
Fwiw I have been indie for 10 years so this would not benefit me.
[+] [-] wnevets|11 months ago|reply
[1] https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html
[+] [-] ineedaj0b|11 months ago|reply
US games are in a tremendous slump of quality and seem to be slop factories rn. Add in unions, I don't know. I don't see this helping the slop factories become not slop factories.
[+] [-] egypturnash|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] TaurenHunter|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] blacktits69|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] wetpaws|11 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] stealthlogic|11 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] joemazerino|11 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] charcircuit|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] frakt0x90|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] diggan|11 months ago|reply
Which website are you looking at?
Unless I'm mistaken, the website is https://uvw-cwa.org/ and it isn't even red, have no hammers/sickles, and mostly talks about "stronger together", which fair enough, I guess could give some knee-jerk reaction about socialism if you don't believe in working together with others.
[+] [-] mullingitover|11 months ago|reply
- it's a "Union," founded by "We the people" rather than being subjects subservient to an ordained ruler
- It has revolutionary ideals at its core
- There are fasces everywhere, an overt symbol of collective effort
- Right out of the gate, the US socialized one of the largest industries: transporting mail across the nation. Founders wrote it into the Constitution to ensure that it was untouchable
- To go along with that, the interstate highway system is a massive, communal project
- The most politically untouchable service, something politicians practically place on an altar, is a massive wealth redistribution scheme: Social Security
Beyond all this I didn't see a single thing on that site that has socialism design influences, which frankly makes it sort of un-American.
[+] [-] sham1|11 months ago|reply
Okay, and why is this exactly bad? After all, the workers behind games want to get better working environments and they use the workers' movements symbolism in representing this. Also, class solidarity.
> These are not the type of people I want to work with
And you don't have to. You can always go indie and not associate yourself with people who organise themselves for the sake of a better industry. No one's forcing you to have solidarity and no one is forced to have solidarity with you.
> and it would be bad for the stock price.
I'll be frank (and a tad polemical) but if an industry cannot maintain its value without exploiting its workers, it shouldn't exist. That's just the free market at work.
[+] [-] tekla|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] chii|11 months ago|reply
Or, they ensures you're credited regardless if you left before the game shipped (because it is a form of portfolio for your career).
And lastly, a union means you cannot be exploited hard, like a lot of wanabe game programmers and artists are wont to be.
[+] [-] devnullbrain|11 months ago|reply
But then so has most of the industry, which has experienced growth year-on-year.
A profit does not prevent layoffs and no individual can 10X themselves to safety. There is a huge power and incentive disparity between the people with the power to initiate layoffs and the people who get laid off. There's a way to shrink the gap, but it means accepting you have more in common with your colleagues than your shareholders, then communicating it collectively.
[+] [-] lenerdenator|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] johnnyanmac|11 months ago|reply
>Layoffs happen because these games bomb over and over and over and money runs out.
Not these days. How many layoffs have EA/Activision done now? 4 waves each?. Sony's been doing well but still laying off all the NA studios.